


On the subject of songwriting

by WormsOnAString



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Illiterate Jonny D'ville, Mentioned Dr Carmilla (Dr. Carmilla), Minor The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina, Never-, Not important to the story, aro/ace ivy, important to my soul, me? projecting?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27791356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WormsOnAString/pseuds/WormsOnAString
Summary: The Mechanisms are together brainstorming their next album and a fight (expectedly) breaks out. Ivy notices Jonny leave for his room and decides to follow.
Relationships: Ivy Alexandria & Jonny d'Ville, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 6
Kudos: 84





	On the subject of songwriting

The mechs were sat together in a circle, scattered across The Aurora’s steel kitchen. It was a rare time that all 8 of them (plus Aurora) were together (and civil). 

The lack of murdering was quite an anomaly, Ivy noted, but she wasn’t one to complain about it, the crew was being quite productive for once. She was having a good time, actually!

Fond gazes bounced around the room from crew mate to crew mate while laughs echoed out through the metal vents of the ship.

This was quite strange. The chances of them sitting together for this long with absolutely no deaths occurring was a whopping .00042%. 

This never happened, she realized.

Ever.

So she savored the little society the crew had formed within each other with every interaction.

They were their own little family.

A fondness grew in her chest as she watched the crew, her siblings that she happened to stumble upon, interact.

The team had decided it was time for a change in their discography, so here they were.

“Brainstorming”

Tim and Ashes shouted out stories of both their individual and team adventures while Toy Soldier piped up with a million random facts that were somehow relevant in its mind (Ivy found them quite fascinating, though some of the others would disagree).

Raphaella expanded on the ideas, too. The Toy Soldier was excited to have someone else contributing, showing its excitement by repeatedly clapping its wooden hands (it created quite a banging sound) together. The only difference between her and the wooden “mechanisms” contributions was that she tended to add a lot more… violent terminology and descriptors.

Explosives for the sets, effects during certain story parts of songs, etc, they were all fair game for what may come out of Raph's mouth.

When she piped up, laughs were bound to consume the room.

Marius and Brian sat next to her, still laughing, but modifying her ideas for set and songs into a show palatable for “humans”. She tended to forget not everyone was immortal, a common occurrence for such a new immortal. 

Raph’s disappointment would always be briefly visible when corrected before she dissipated into her next eccentric idea, her contagious smile always coming right back.

She loved Marius and Brian too much to let their words affect her.

Then there was Nastya. She sat a bit outside the group, appearing outrageously bored, but was attentive, nonetheless. She was propped against a wall of her girlfriend, quietly humming melodies sure to be used in songs later. 

Aurora's engine whine matched Nastya’s pitch with a floating, haunting beauty. The partners were infatuated with each other, Ivy laughed, that was clear.

Romance was the one thing her brain couldn’t and didn’t have a desire to understand. That wouldn’t stop her from supporting her family and their… romantic (romance was a vague concept among the gang of immortals) endeavors.

The one mech out of place, Ivy noticed, was Jonny. He was... well he was in character, Ivy guessed, but it still didn’t make his behavior less troubling.

He wasn’t laughing or having a good time with the others.

He was pacing with a notebook in his hands, continuously walking around the edge of the circle of immortals, seemingly scribbling down every idea shouted into the wild air, all while being deeply stuck in his own head.

Noise swirled into tornadoes around the room, swirls of color lighting up in Ivy’s brain. Jonny seemed to absorb all of it, however. He appeared to be keeping up with the conversation better than Ivy and her mechanized brain could. 

She, once again, wasn’t complaining. It was just... strange.

His constant scribble of words started to earn him Ivy’s respect as he kept up with the crew and their idea’s and voices for over an hour. 

Page after page appearing to be filled with the scribbles of notes.

Later, Jonny would retreat to his room and use the notes to write music, though no recorded/written copies were ever made. He simply got off his bed after a week of isolation and forcibly made the crew perform one of the million ideas he had come up with in his head.

Only ever in his head, no where else.

Ivy felt the sudden urge to help the oldest member of her family. 

How, she didn’t know yet, but she didn’t want to leave Jonny alone during his feverish writing sessions, at least this time. 

Maybe she would bring him some food (even if he was typically the cook of the crew, and Ivy often forgot to eat, herself).

That was definitely an idea.

Ivy was pulled out of her thoughts as someone shot Tim (there was an 86% chance it was Ashes in response to Tim interrupting them, Ivy calculated), which quickly brought The Peaceful Mecs ™ to an end. 

There was a fight brewing, that was obvious, and Ivy did not particularly care to hang around for it, no offense to the others. Ideas had been generated and sorted out which was why she was there, not to institute violence.  
d  
Anyways, Jonny was (quite sneakily) retreating from the chaotic room, and Ivy didn’t want to lose sight of him quite yet.

So, she hopped down from her perch at the top of a barely used fridge and faked walking back to the archives. 

Jonny would surely shoot her if he knew he was being tailed, and there was a 87% chance he was experiencing some stress related scene from the past, making him even more trigger happy.

Ivy knew Jonny’s habits. She knew every crew member’s habits and cues.

The archivist would watch the mechs as they walked around the ship and interacted through black and white computer screens, feed coming through the lenses she hid in corners (of public spaces, she was no creep). 

She would look through the screens by her bed (which was currently a pile of blankets in the far right corner of the archive) when she woke up from the unremembered nightmares. She watched when she was so overcome with worry for the crew so all encompassing she could not think of anything else. 

She watched them with the utmost love, of course, but when she watched, her brain compartmentalized every aspect of the mechs and their individual habits. She didn’t really have a choice in this, it just happened (Ivy blamed Carmilla).

Ivy knew her crewmates’ habits, and she knew Jonny was upset to an extreme degree.

Why? 

Why?

Why? 

She racked her brain for anything out of the ordinary that happened, something that could trigger a response like this. There was… nothing that had over a 3.28% chance.

Her worry for the first mate grew.

Ivy backed up, trailing him 10 feet farther away than she was before, even if she doubted Jonny would notice the ship crashing at this point. He had begun to hunch into himself so much, obviously trying to keep something out.

And then, just as quick as the two had started moving, the two arrived at Jonny’s quarters.

The younger mech could not believe Jonny could have shut the very mechanical door any faster than he did.

Nastya probably did some work on his door to make it close faster, the whole crew knew how close the two were, it was a plausible theory. She would ask the mechanic later.

Ivy’s thoughts tapered off as she heard the whir and bang of Jonny’s harmonica being thrown.

Oh the poor man.

Her fist knocked upon the door, all fear of being shot by the first mate dissipated. Now she just wanted to help her friend.

There was no audible response.

Fuck.

“Aurora?” the question hung empty in the air, but Ivy knew the ship was listening.

A few seconds later Jonny’s door opened just wide enough for Ivy to fit through.

It shut back just as fast once she was in the room picked clean of anything personal.

Jonny was sitting in the corner of his room hugging a worn out blanket around him tightly, the notebook discarded a few feet away.

Ivy walked over cautiously to sit next to him. There was no reaction, only a prior tenseness and far off look in the eyes he tried to bury with the shaded goggles that rested on his head at all times now pulled down.

Oh, Jonny.

Ivy carefully put a hand out only to be met with whines that slightly resembled the word no from the small, nonverbal crew mate.

She backed off immediately, instead starting to talk, soothing words with no meaning and no story, only saying words to let him know she was there. She wasn’t threatening. She wasn’t going to hurt him.

She wasn’t Carmilla.

Meanwhile she backed up slowly to grab the harmonica wedged into The Aurora’s wall.

There were no dents. Good. Aurora wouldn't alert Nastya then. Nastya didn’t have to know about this. At least not right now, Ivy would for sure talk to her later, though.

Ivy flipped the device around in her hands. It was bulky and square compared to the slender tubing of her normal instruments, but it was uniquely Jonny in every way.

For one, it was the only instrument that wouldn’t break in times of stress like these, instead scratches and cuts built up around every surface, making it completely different from how it came in the package. It had transformed into a different instrument, it had taken on a new life. 

But also, its sound, so harsh and loud with a soothing melody behind every note. It was just all… so him.

She brought it back to the corner of the room where she saw Jonny weakly looking up at her. Carefully and with both of her arms extended where he could see them, she slipped her arm around him.

The two fit together.

His breathing was 60% steadier now, Ivy smiled.

Maybe she could do something for him after all. 

If she was helping Jonny, she wasn’t useless.

Ivy grabbed his notebook, as he burrowed into her arm, maybe she could sort out some of his notes before he would wake.

Anything to be helpful she would do.

Anything for Jonny.

The flimsy paper scratched her hands, the book felt hand bound. It was nice, sturdy and well made. He must have worked on it for a bit, this was not first attempt quality.

It reminded her of something she would find in the ship’s library.

The pages were fresh in the beginning, Ivy noticed, but got more yellowed with age as it went on, and on, pages upon pages, probably around 150 of them, all filled to the brim.

What was weird is that none of the pages had any semblance of a language on them.

It was just scribbles of pen and pencil built up over older scribbles.

It was on every page.

These were not notes. This wasn’t a notebook. These were not feelings, Jonny would probably kill her slowly for even suggesting so. There was little this well cared for could be.

So maybe it wasn’t meant for writing. Maybe this was Jonny’s attempt at faking notes.

It lined up, there was a 97.8% chance that is what it was.

Jonny was illiterate.

It made sense, when would he have learned, he was young when mechanized and Carmilla wasn’t the most patient of teachers but still. 

How long had he been hiding this, Ivy frowned, it had to have been hundreds of thousands of years before Nastya had first arrived on the ship.

How had she never noticed? It was her job to notice things like this. 

Obviously the rest of the crew didn’t know, if the meeting today showed anything, it showed how oblivious they all were to their captain first mate. 

It suddenly made sense his frustrating hand waves during practice when they asked why he couldn’t just write the lyrics down. 

It suddenly made sense the lack of sheet music and his stubborn refusal when she asked to see his notebook.

A lot of things were suddenly making sense.

She sat there for a moment and came to a silent decision. Ivy put the notebook back where it was to the inch and sat in silence with Jonny sleeping more peacefully then she had ever seen him.

***

Time passed and when Jonny awoke, he unsurprisingly shot her, though she didn’t put up a fight or complain.

He went into his “work mode” and emerged from his room a few days later with ideas for lyrics and arrangements that the others would never get first try, resulting in a Death By Jonny.

This was no surprise to anyone.

But the next time Jonny had to get around to writing something, he found an audio recording of (very thorough) notes in his chamber with a note attached.

“Come down to the archives, I can help you.”

Jonny knew exactly who it was from, and for the first time in a while, he felt himself smile.

Whether he went or not, well, he would never tell someone like you.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first fic on Ao3 (and like my first fic ever) I hope you enjoyed! make sure to go drink water!
> 
> The best, Worms!


End file.
